Spencer made no comment on this obvious truism. Tommy Esmond again moistened his dry lips with his tongue. He was a long time in coming to the point, but he came to it at last.
"Well, old man, I was playing with an old pal of mine, with whom I have been in business for years. We had a nice code of signals arranged. I was as cautious as I could be, but my partner had been dining out, and he was a bit indiscreet. There were three or four men watching us, they caught us both, although, as I tell you, I was cautious. But I made one slip, and they were down on me like a knife. You don't know my partner. It is the end of him. But it is the end of Tommy Esmond also."
To say that Spencer was disgusted would be to convey a faint idea of his feelings. And yet, as he looked at the huddled, trembling form in the chair, his sentiment was rather one of compassion than loathing. what was there behind? what tragedy of circumstance had driven this apparently lighthearted, butterfly little creature to such crooked ways?
"You're an old hand, then? It's not the first time you've cheated?"
Tommy Esmond smiled wanly. He did not answer the question at once.
"What age do you guess me, Spencer?"
"At a casual glance, a little over fifty. You may be older. Looking at you closely, you do seem a bit made up, dye and all that sort of thing."
"My dear sir, I am old enough to be your father. I shall never see sixty again."
"And when did you take to this game?" Esmond thought a little before he replied, he was evidently counting the years.
"When I was twenty-two I got an entrée into society. I was then enjoying an income of two pounds a week, I was a clerk in an insurance office. At twenty-four I left the insurance business and started cheating for a living."